


lantern in the dark

by gauras



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Developing Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Haircuts, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, do y'all remember when there was a brief surge of jm haircut fics? i miss those days, spans from late s3 to good cows era to post MAG160
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-29
Updated: 2020-04-29
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:34:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23904700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gauras/pseuds/gauras
Summary: "Ah…" It’s obvious, the way he’s gearing up to refuse, scrambling to cobble together a half-decent lie to convince Martin to leave him be. Except Jon is a notoriously awful liar, even at his best, and the circles below his eyes truly are horrendous.“Really,Jon. You leave in, what, two days? You should really get some rest." Jon opens his mouth, but Martin, in his element, barrels on, "Come on. I’ll walk you out."
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 33
Kudos: 252





	lantern in the dark

**Author's Note:**

> this is nothing, but i’ve spent a Long Ass Time on it so pls enjoy xoxo
> 
> most of this was written before s5 began, but there are minor world building spoilers, but nothing major. also, additional cw for buried-related fuckery (aka asphyxiation) in the third section. it was… unpleasant to write, but the buried is one of the few fears that actually Gets To Me, so. do w that what u will
> 
> a huge thank u to [kosy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kosy/pseuds/kosy) and [jewishfitz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jewishfitz/pseuds/jewishfitz) for their help w this fic! their input was invaluable and honestly made this so much better than i ever could have done on my own!!! they're both amazing writers, pls go and check out their work!!
> 
> title from october project's [if i could](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbYtNvKLFko)

There is a light on in the Archives.

It’s late, and most of the Institute’s employees have packed up and gone home—tucked their perfectly normal files full of perfectly normal notes into their nice, shiny bags and had a perfectly normal commute back home to spend the evening with their perfectly normal friends and families. Martin is still here because—the patrols are still habit? The Archives feel safer, somehow, despite knowing their true purpose? The empty building feels slightly less desolate than his cold, silent flat?

Well. _Mostly_ empty building. Because there’s a light on.

Martin finishes up patrolling, stalling, _whatever,_ and heads back to his desk to put on his jacket, collect his bag, and pluck up the courage to brave the lonely journey back to his flat. He’s in the middle of shrugging on his jacket when his eyes catch on the barest sliver of butter-yellow light oozing from below Jon’s office door. Typically, it wouldn’t be odd, given Jon’s propensity for staying after hours, but he hasn’t _been_ here, of late. Slowly, quietly, Martin slinks up to the door and presses his ear to it, trying to determine if Jon simply forgot to turn his lamp off—again—or if he’s actually in for once.

He shouldn’t be in. He’s—been through a lot, recently, and should be resting before his journey to China in a few days.

The smooth cadence of Jon’s once oft-mocked _statement voice_ doesn’t bleed through the door and Martin can’t hear any movement. That’s… good. It’s good Jon’s not here. He’s taking time, finally taking care of himself. The disappointment Martin feels is the general, self-righteous sort due to him wasting power again, _not_ that he won’t get a chance to say goodbye before Jon leaves. Martin sighs, shakes his head at himself, and opens the door.

And yelps when _Jon_ yelps, jerking his head up from where he’d been bent over… whatever it is he was doing, choppy, overly long fringe falling in his eyes while the rest of his hair catches in his stubbly beard and surprised mouth. He sputters as he, apparently, inhales some of it while Martin stammers out an apology.

“It’s fine, Martin,” Jon says, looking thoroughly unimpressed while picking hair off his tongue. It’s disgusting to watch. “Did you need something?”

"No, no, I was just checking to see if you were still in."

"Well, obviously I am. I'd prefer you knocked, in the future."

"R-right, of course! It's just that…" he hesitates and Jon pushes his fringe off his forehead. It flops forward again, wispy strands of inky black and slate grey framing his face as he peers up at him. His glasses sit on the desk, forgotten at his elbow. “Well, shouldn’t you be home?”

Jon stares. "It’s the middle of the workday, Martin."

Martin stares right back. "Jon, it's nearly _nine._ At _night.”_

"What? No, it can't be." Jon doesn't keep a clock in his office, says the ticking drives him to distraction—conveniently forgetting the advent of digital—so Martin pulls out his mobile and shows Jon the time. He pales ever so slightly and sucks in a breath through his teeth. "Damn."

"Yeah," Martin agrees, intelligently. "Look, I was about to head out. You could—come with?"

"Ah…" It’s obvious, the way he’s gearing up to refuse, scrambling to cobble together a half-decent lie to convince Martin to leave him be. Except Jon is a notoriously awful liar, even at his best, and the circles below his eyes truly are horrendous.

 _“Really,_ Jon. You leave in, what, two days? You should really get some rest." Jon opens his mouth, but Martin, in his element, barrels on, "Come on. I’ll walk you out."

Beleaguered, put upon, Jon sighs. "I can see you’ve made up your mind. Fine. Let me just," he gestures lazily to his office, _“if_ that’s alright.”

"Y-yeah, that’s okay! Erm, y-you got it." Martin gives an awkward, half-aborted finger gun—something he picked up from Tim, so, _so_ long ago—and ducks out of the room, face burning. Of _course_ Jon’s allowed to pack up. Christ.

It's then that he realizes, with mounting horror, that his jacket only ever made it up the one shoulder.

Martin finishes yanking on his jacket, cursing himself, then collects his bag and fidgets next to the Archives' door. 

For an obscene amount of time. 

How long, exactly, does it take one man to get ready to leave? Did… did Jon forget? Did he just agree to get Martin out of the room? Should he just—go?

The light in Jon's office turns off as its door creaks open, just then, and Martin relaxes when Jon steps out and crosses the room, clad in a zipped jacket with a stylized ghost leering out at the world. Jon shoves his hands deep into his pockets.

“Got everything?” Martin asks, eyeing Jon’s half-collapsed, tired posture. There’s a hole in the side of one of his trainers and a bit of drab sock peeks out. He doesn’t even have a bag with him.

Jon sighs, rolling his shoulders back. “Yeah.”

“After you, then.” Aiming for gallant, Martin holds the door and waves Jon through. He hesitates for just a moment—eyes darting between Martin and the open door—before marching passed, steps quick and light. Martin shuts the door behind himself and then they're off, traversing the cavernous halls shoulder to shoulder.

It's quiet, and Jon looks pensive when Martin glances over at him, bottom lip tucked between his teeth. The scabbed-over cut across his throat looks to be healing nicely, no longer the ragged slash that had carved dangerously deep, down towards his jugular. Jon wets his lips, and Martin helplessly tracks the flash of pink.

God. Okay. Martin turns his attention back to the tile underfoot, the ugly popcorn ceiling overhead, anywhere other than _Jon_ and his various, increasingly worrisome wounds. No matter how much he'd like to, Martin can't just wiggle his fingers and magically make it all better.

Ever since he was young, Martin's always been a bit of a chatterbox—and there have been times he’s caught a glimpse of similar tendencies in Jon—but now he hesitates to break the silence. It wraps around them, as suffocating and unbearable as ever, but Martin cannot, for the life of him, alight on a conversation topic that isn’t sore or trite.

Their footsteps, discordant and asynchronous, echo ahead then double back to greet them like a pair of over-excited dogs. Jon’s slight limp provides a shuffling, legato accompaniment.

“H-how’s Georgie?” Martin eventually asks. It’s like prodding at a tooth gone septic, something within him rotting, and rancid, and desperate to be poked. He respects her, he really does—she’s their age and she’s got her own podcast with a small yet dedicated following, she’s making something of her life, she isn’t tethered to a place that’s blatantly _evil—_ but he can’t help the jealousy that rises like bile whenever Jon brings her up. _He picked her,_ his terrible, useless, _petty_ brain will tell him, _he went to her for help, to feel safe. He picked her over you._ Like he hadn’t been trapped in hell corridors with Tim at the time, just as deep in all this awfulness as Jon. Like he’s even someone Jon feels safe with.

Jon frowns over at him, surprised and suspicious and _come on,_ Martin really does like her. Despite having never met. Despite avoiding all mention of her at any cost. “Ah, good. She’s good.”

“Good! That’s… that’s good.” Fuck’s sake.

“It’s been—I’ve been giving her some space.” Less good. Or maybe more good? No, definitely less good. “I’m not the, the best flatmate, you could say.” _Definitely_ less good.

“Oh, I’m sure that’s not true,” Martin offers, but Jon shakes his head with a light, self-deprecating huff of a laugh, and does not respond.

They continue on. The squeal of the stairwell’s door swirls about them when they enter. Round and round they go, up the stairs, and Martin, who hates the things on principle, silently thanks them and their oddly unpleasant height—his and Jon’s joint huffing and puffing drowns out the awkwardness caused by his failed query.

When they stumble out of the stairwell, the foyer is dark, and the far-off street lamps pour their faint light through the circular front windows, pools of sodium-orange splashed over the tile like the phosphorescent flash of a predator’s eyes.

“Those never… never get any easier, do they?” Martin pants.

“I-I think they… I think they’re cursed,” Jon agrees, heaving for breath. He looks—cute, half his face cast in the stairwell’s stark light, the faint flush of exertion chasing away the sickly pallor that’s haunted him of late. He straightens, unzips his hoodie a tad, exposing just a smidge of dark, scarred collar bone.

“Definitely,” Martin says, weakly, and trails after him to the ornate double doors that beckon the unwary and traumatized.

Outside, it’s breezy, and they’re immediately buffeted by a gust of wind. Jon sputters and scrapes his hair out of his eyes, only for it to be tossed right back in his face as they descend the front steps.

Martin watches him fight with it and chews the inside of his cheek. The urge to linger here, with Jon, is strong; he forces it down. “Well, I guess I’m off?”

Pausing his struggle, Jon turns to Martin. The wind whips his hair up, into a very small tornado, a den of writhing snakes. “Oh. Good luck, then?”

 _Good luck?_ God, that’s sweet. Martin smiles, too big for nine in the evening. “Yeah. And you, you’ll be okay?”

Jon rolls his eyes, reaches up to flatten down his hair, gathering it up into the world’s tiniest ponytail. He holds it, elbows angled out, awkward and charming as anything. “Yes, I’ll be fine.” He casts his eyes about the darkened street, over the sad, scraggly grasses wilting in the summer heat, clearly struggling with what he wants to say. “I’ll, ah, call you. And Basira. A-and everyone else, if anything comes up. T-take care of yourself, alright?”

Martin’s heart is fit to burst from his chest, rabbiting about its cage of bone. _Calm down,_ he tells himself, _be cool._ “I will,” he manages, sounding categorically uncool, and doesn’t move. Jon looks at him, lightly concerned irritation gathering in the fine crow’s feet by his eyes, fringe working its way free from his hold to dance spindly, drawn out shadows across his forehead. Martin tries to say _Goodnight,_ or _You too,_ or something, _anything,_ but what comes out is, instead, “You could get it cut, you know.”

Jon opens his mouth. Closes it. “What?”

“Your, your hair. If it’s giving you so much trouble, you could—I know a person? They’re really good with curly hair, if you want a—” Jon looks so terribly baffled. “—y’know, a referral?”

Jon drops his hands. His hair flies into his face, rises about his head in an ashen cloud. “A haircut.”

“Y-yeah. That’s—yep.”

“And give someone—a _stranger,_ no less—permission to stand behind me with a sharp implement? Don’t be ridiculous.” Jon shakes his head, but Martin can maybe spot the beginnings of a smile hidden below his wind-wild, tangled hair. “Goodnight, Martin.” He turns and begins walking down the street, outline warped wavy as the wind snags and tugs on all the places his silhouette gives.

“Night, Jon!” Martin calls after him. As he turns to head for the Tube station, he realizes that he never did, in fact, say goodbye, or even tell him to be safe. Fucking hell. It’ll… it’ll be fine.

* * *

“This is disgusting,” Jon grumbles from the bathroom. Martin sets his book down on his belly and stares up at the poorly painted ceiling. It’s got a discolored stain lurking in the corner, one that seeps its searching, yellowy fingers out from its rust-orange center.

“Maybe you’ll learn your lesson, then,” Martin says, forcing his voice flat, unsympathetic. Before, he would’ve scrambled at the opportunity to offer his help, but after what Jon’s done to the drain… He shudders. No. Some things _must_ be learned.

Still feels bad about it, though.

Jon appears in the doorway, the blue of his gloves a nice contrast to his skin, looking pale, nauseated. “Martin…” he begins, sounding deeply and upsettingly pathetic.

The stain’s oozing protrusions are suddenly so very interesting. Martin follows them with his eyes. “No, Jon. I don’t want to hear it, or, or _see_ it, or even _think_ about it. It’s your fault.” He can’t risk another glance at Jon—he’s so close to breaking and taking pity on the menace. “Whinging at me won’t make it go any faster.”

There’s a beat, where Martin holds his breath. “It was worth a shot,” Jon mutters, drumming his latex-clad fingers on the doorframe. Sneaky bastard. He sighs, gustily, and now that Martin pays attention, he can hear its overblown theatricality. “For the record,” Jon pauses, waits until Martin gives in and rolls his head to look over at him, hunched small and his big, brown eyes so very unhappy, “I hate this.”

“Of course you do. Now off you pop.” Jon glares, abandons the pretense with an indelicate swear, and retreats into the bathroom to finish his revolting work. Martin gives a cheery wave as he goes, dropping his arm back down on the bed when the door swings behind him.

He’s not heartless, of course he feels for Jon. God knows he’s cleaned out his fair share of drains before he learned not to let his tangles of hair wash down them. But, honestly, he has to draw the line of what-he’ll-do-for-Jon _somewhere,_ and it is, apparently, at dealing with the week’s _second_ clogged drain.

He loves Jon’s long hair, loves to card his fingers through its silken, wiry strands, loves the way it curls about his shoulders, loves how it frizzes up after it rains. He loves it, but Jon never really learned how to properly care for it. His nan, an elderly white woman whose hair was, so he’s been told, straight as a pin and easy to manage, hadn’t known what to do with it, either. Her method had been to keep it cut short, severe, and Jon had kept up the habit until very recently. So yes, his heart goes out to Jon and his scalp aches in sympathy whenever he watches him yank a brush straight through, crown to tip, but the _hair spiders_ are a bit much, even for Martin.

Although. It _is_ a bit funny when Jon startles himself with his own hair, and his good natured, grumbling blush when Martin teases him about it is adorable.

“You’re a cruel man, Blackwood,” Jon calls over the running of the tap, likely scrubbing his hands to clean them of any residue, real or not.

“Hey, someone had to do it, and it just… wasn’t gonna be me.”

“Hm. Quite.” Jon exits the bathroom and crosses over to the bed, falling onto it next to Martin.

Martin props himself up to get a good look at him, hanging half off the bed, limbs a graceless tangle. “You’re very brave,” Martin says, letting his voice lilt towards mocking.

“Shut up.” Despite his words, Jon smiles up at him. It’s Martin’s favorite smile—the small, soft-edged one, meant just for him. It’s besotted, and Martin melts every time he sees it.

“No, I mean it. Dealing with that nastiness all on your own…” Over-exaggerated, he shudders as he leans over Jon to kiss him on the cheek, elbow planted next to his head to keep from squashing him.

“Don’t _coddle_ me,” Jon protests, ducking his head away so the kiss smears across the scratchy hinge of his jaw, squirming when Martin breathes a laugh directly into his ear. “Stop that!” he squawks, his own laugh turning his voice all pitchy.

“Again: your fault.” Martin pulls back and grins, twines a particularly defined curl around one of his fingers. “You’ll stop letting your hair run down the drain?”

“Lesson learned,” Jon intones, rolling his eyes.

“Good,” Martin says, then drops his full weight atop Jon, resting his temple on his angular shoulder. He grunts, softly, but his hands come up to settle at Martin’s waist, long fingers scratching lightly at his back.

“I’ve never let it get this long,” Jon says, after several minutes of calm silence. “Far more trouble than it’s worth, if I’m being honest.”

“Why not cut it, then?”

Quietly, Jon laughs. “I thought you liked it long?”

“I do! I do. It’s just… If you don’t like it, then there’s no need to keep it. It’s your body, do what you want to make yourself happy.”

“I like making _you_ happy, Martin. But I can see your point.” He breathes slowly, deep as he can with Martin draped across his chest, and the slow expansion of his diaphragm is embarrassingly comforting. “No idea where we’d go, though. It’s not exactly lying low if I stop by the barber’s for a trim.”

“We could do it here.” He can feel Jon’s eyes on the crown of his head and Martin traces the line of his shirt collar, pulled askew, baring his neck and a bit of his chest, “You, o-or I could… They’re just scissors. I’ve done it before.” When he was seven and gave himself a bowl cut, yeah, and his mum had shouted at him for it before taking him to have his head shaved, but Jon doesn’t need to know any of that.

“I-I’m not sure,” Jon says, slowly, delicately, “I’ll need time to, to think about it.”

“Okay, that’s fine! There’s no rush. We’ve nothing but time.” Jon’s arms wrap around his back in wordless thanks and Martin relaxes into him, fills in his harsh-edged gaps, like molten metal poured into a mold.

“I… I like when you, ah, pull on it. When we kiss,” Jon admits. Martin smirks into his chest and curls his finger to tug gently on that one small curl. Trapped under him, Jon shudders.

“We should make a pros and cons list. Be scientific about it.”

“Mm. Very wise.”

“I _am_ the older out of the two of us. Wisdom comes with age.”

“Yes, you’re positively ancient.” Jon shifts to tuck Martin’s head under his chin, the movement incidentally pressing Martin’s ear against his chest. Slow and even below his cheek, Jon’s heartbeat marches on while his breath wheezes through his lungs, and the visceral physicality of it soothes that piece of Martin’s heart that won’t quit bleeding. “I do trust you, you know.”

Tangled together like this, Martin has a perfect view of the sky out the window, and he frowns at the lazy smear of pale white clouds bobbing along in their sea of blue. “What? Of course I know.”

“Oh. G-good. I didn’t want you to think—well. It hardly matters.”

“What are you on about?”

“Nothing, forget I said anything.”

“Jon.” Martin starts to push himself up but Jon’s arms tighten around him. Slowly, reluctantly, he settles back into place. “Please, just—No more shutting each other out, right?”

“I’m not, it’s—” he groans, fingers tightening in the back of Martin’s shirt. Carefully, setting each word down like it’s a broken shard of sharp crystal, he says, “If there’s anyone I’d let cut my hair, it’s you, Martin.”

“Oh. Um, thank you?” Jon sighs, and it ruffles through Martin’s hair, warm and slightly damp. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have pushed.”

“No, it’s fine. I just, I need you to know that my… reluctance has nothing to do with you. I don’t… I like that you like it? It’s—it’s been so long, since it was short and I was… I was a different person then. I suppose it feels wrong, somehow, to go back to that. To _him.”_

Only Jon could turn something as simple as a trim into a question of personhood and identity. “If you don’t like it, you can grow it back out.”

“I know, I know. Still. It’s… I need to sort things out, first.”

“Okay. Whatever you need. Again: no rush.”

“Thank you, Martin,” Jon says, and he brushes a kiss to the crown of Martin’s head. Martin kisses his sternum, a hard pit of nameless anxiety forming in his stomach. They avoid talking about the future in general, as though it is a faint star that can only be seen by looking just to the side of it. Avert your eyes and it becomes clear. He feels as though he’s stared directly at it; it pales, and fades, and disappears before his eyes.

Martin tucks his nose against Jon, breathing him in and beating down the unease. They have time. It’s just him being silly, in typical Martin fashion. He— _they_ can have this.

* * *

In the end, they don’t have anything, least of all time.

It’s a close encounter with the Buried that decides for Jon. Probably. If the Fears had been colors, before, now they’re a watercolor painting thrown in the bath, the world blurred and bleeding.

It comes for them in the deadened hours of what’s probably night, when the darkness breathes close and hot on their camp, curled in a protective crook left by an uprooted tree. Neither of them are asleep, despite the difficulty of a day spent navigating a shifting hell-scape where the loose stones of a riverbed reveal themselves to be thousands of teeming, mottled beetles, iridescent wings the color of a nosebleed, or the red blush of morning on the horizon resolves into the misty spray of a slaughtered village, illuminated by pillagers’ fires.

Martin has his arm drawn around Jon’s shoulders, who stares dully at the blank, empty expanse of sky, slowly fingering the tartan weave of Martin’s shirt. He’s heavy, on Martin’s arm, more solidly _there_ than he’s ever been in all the years they’ve known each other. Every inhale-exhale seems to dislodge more air than it should and the wind rattles in the trees, as though this ruined world breathes in time with him.

Martin must be more exhausted than he thought. Waxing poetic about Jon and the way the world around him shifts to accommodate him is nothing new, exactly, but there’s a time and place for such things. Here, now? Hardly appropriate. He yawns, and a beat later feels Jon do the same.

Eyes dragging, Martin blinks, and the roots arching overhead tangle with the tall grass that tilts down into their shallow sinkhole, almost as though they’ve been knit together by some unseen, clever hand. He blinks again, the walls of their cozy divot in the ground crumbling as the tip of his boot abruptly bumps into one, a cascade of earth worming its way below the cuff of his trousers. A third blink, and something protruding from the dirt wraps around his wrist. Martin jerks upright, breath tight in his chest. 

Spindly, reaching roots turned to grasping hands twine about his arms and legs, inch towards his mouth. Martin shrieks. He scrambles backward, feet sliding in the loose dirt, until his shoulders hit the sheer wall of earth behind him. Had the sides of their pit always towered like that, leaned close like this, tightly loomed like he’s trapped at the bottom of a crevasse?

“Martin?” Jon asks, slurred, blinking dazedly, exhausted and Seeing things far from his own body. “What’s—” He starts to push himself up, but the ground below him softens and gives way. His eyes widen as he begins to sink, dirt disintegrating into sand, and his weak struggling does nothing but send him slipping under even faster.

“Jon!” Martin lurches forward, barely managing to snag the tips of Jon’s fingers before he’s completely consumed by the ground. It’s his burned hand and Jon cries out, but his ever-stiff fingers cling to Martin with all their strength. “Hold on Jon, I’ll—I’ll—” Curling and coiling, undulating in a sinuous, nauseating motion, the roots overhead turn themselves around in complex knots that resolve into nooses. When they drop down, tightening, Martin yelps and ducks, barely keeping his tenuous hold on Jon.

“Martin,” Jon pants, gasps as the earth constricts around him, _“Martin.”_

Tears blur his vision and the air is clouded with dust that coats his tongue, sits gritty along his gumline. Clenching his jaw feels like chewing on sand and his mouth tastes of dirty, salty copper, but Martin ignores it all and _pulls._

Jon screams.

Martin thinks he might, too.

He’s flat on his back, Jon’s hand in his. Martin blinks away the black spots crowding his peripherals, shoulder and bicep screaming with pain, just as a root snatches at his ankle. He kicks out instinctively and tears himself free, then rolls onto his hands and knees. His breath comes in short, sharp bursts and he can’t _breathe_ but somewhere—below the rush of blood in his ears and the awful, creaking groan of old wood turned all bendy and _wrong—_ there’s a broken, wet sound. A bitten-off whimper of pain. _Jon._

Scrambling to his feet, Martin turns to him. He’s cradling his arm close; it sits awkwardly in its socket. _Oops,_ Martin’s brain supplies, dumbly. But there’s another root, covered in a fuzzed corona of fine, whipping tendrils, reaching for Jon and there’s no option other than to scoop him up, ignore the cry it elicits, turn tail, and run.

And run.

And _run._

It takes so long. An eternity. Like someone’s taken the world’s hourglass-flow of time and turned it on its side. Millennia of slipping, sliding steps; eons of thrashing and squirming and deepening darkness. Just when Martin’s despair begins to swell, waves breaking over crumbling seawalls, just when he starts to think that this is how it ends, running in an ever-constricting hamster ball of dirt and choke, they’re out.

Just like that.

Martin bursts through a bristling, vicious wall of brambly roots and suddenly he can breathe again, but he doesn’t stop running. He goes and goes and doesn’t see the rock jutting from the earth until it’s too late, eyes adjusting from complete darkness to mostly-darkness. He has just enough time to twist as they fall so Jon lands on top of him. It _hurts—_ probably more than it should—but he’d rather be crushed by Jon than the other way around.

Winded, dazed, ecstatic to be alive and riding an adrenaline high, Martin laughs. It’s manic, working its way towards becoming a sob, but he doesn’t care because he’s flat on his back, the heavy gaze of the moon-turned-eye weighing him down, with Jon on top of him, whole and, and... barely moving—

He jolts upright, cradling Jon in his lap.

Jon’s mouth is working but no sound comes out. Wrapped around his neck, tight enough to dig thin, sharp lines of white into his skin, is his own hair. He’s got a few fingers worked underneath, struggling vainly to alleviate the pressure. Spidering lines of burst blood vessels crawl over his cheeks.

It’s a garrote.

Martin flounders, and he gapes, even as Jon’s eyes bulge and his feet kick feebly, until he remembers the dull knife strapped to his belt.

Cutting through Jon’s thick hair, dark as coal and veined with silver, is difficult when it actively fights back. His hands are unsteady and Martin fumbles with the knife. He thinks he accidentally cuts Jon. He _knows_ he cuts himself.

“I’m sorry,” Martin babbles, hands slick with blood and sweat, “sorry, sorry, I’m _so_ sorry—”

It falls still, all at once, when the last strand is severed and Jon heaves a painful sounding breath, coughing and sobbing. He claws away the inert hair and swallows and chokes and hiccups as Martin rocks them back and forth, holding him close but not tight.

Jon clutches, weakly, at Martin’s back. Martin cups the back of his head—now-harmless hair fluffy despite its coating of dirt—and guides him to rest his forehead against Martin’s shoulder so he can cry and heave short, agonized breaths in relative safety. They’re both shaking.

“It’s okay.” It’s really not. “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay…”

The night does not lessen; there’s no longer a dawn to bleed rosy warmth over the world. Instead, Martin just rocks and mumbles words of pointless comfort while Jon clings tight and cries his way through a panic attack.

Eventually his tears run dry and Jon pulls back, linking their hands as he goes, still tangled up in Martin’s lap. Already the bruises around his throat are fading and his arm seems to have popped itself back into place. The tear tracks that cut through the grime on his face are the only lingering evidence of their shared nightmare.

“Thank... you.” Jon’s voice is torn, a painful, papery whisper. There’s nothing to say to that, so Martin just nods, swallowing sympathetically. He stares down at their joined hands, muddied by the blood that seeps sluggishly from the dozen or so cuts he sustained from the whipping roots and his own knife. Jon makes a wounded sound when he notices, thumb smoothing across one.

“Sorry,” he rasps, but Martin just squeezes his good hand.

“Don’t apologize, okay?”

Ever stubborn, Jon presses on, “If I hadn’t—”

“Don’t, Jon. Please. I don’t want to fight, especially not now.” Martin kisses the back of his dirty hand to soften the rebuke.

Jon nods, ducks his head. Uneven locks of hair swing forward, too short, now, to do much to hide his face. All wet and clumped together, his eyelashes create spiky little triangles against each sallow cheek. The muscles in his jaw work and flex as he grits his teeth to keep them from chattering.

Even dirty and trembling and curled in on himself, there’s a gravity to Jon on this wide, empty plain. At the cabin, he was airy, weightless, kite-like; there was some unknown, reedy quality to him, as though if he were to turn sideways and let the light hit him just so, he’d disappear altogether. Martin hadn’t realized how much _presence_ he’d lost until it came back in a rush and he was _heavy_ again. His eyes, once dulled by supernatural hunger, now glitter, bright like the sun as he tries to wrest his breathing under control. He is the center of this wasteland, the rest of creation caught in his orbit, and he looks miserable.

Martin can’t help but reach out and tilt Jon’s face up by the chin. He goes easily, leaning into the touch like a cat when you stroke the soft, vulnerable hollows of their throat. Trusting, despite the mud-and-blood splattered knife lying in the dust beside them. Jon’s expression eases, shifts from that awful, abject misery to something warmer, sweeter. Martin’s laugh from before is back, but it’s gentler now, more disbelieving than manic, and his thundering heart swells with relieved, burning affection.

“Oh, Jon. My Jon,” Martin murmurs, running his own, still-shaking hand through Jon’s greasy—yet lovely—hair. It’s disconcerting when he reaches the end of it far too soon, so he merely repeats the motion. Jon smiles, his bloodshot, still somewhat glassy, eyes soft. “I love you.”

How silly it is, to love at the end of the world. How odd, for that love to grow ever stronger in the face of certain death. How foolish, to cling to this tender, frostbitten thing that persists with all the stubborn hardiness of a weed. How utterly stupid, and amazing, and bewildering it is, to continue to hope and love and trust at the end of all things.

Jon leans in close, gently knocks their foreheads together. He looks at Martin through those Cubist eyelashes, and on anyone else his expression would be coy. “I love you,” he murmurs back, and just for a moment, it feels like the moon-turned-eye blinks.

**Author's Note:**

> [gives jon a ghibli haircut so he can go all angry-fluffy when he uses his beholding powers and also so i don’t do the same to myself]
> 
> if u like, u can find me on tumblr @[humbleboar](https://humbleboar.tumblr.com/) or twitter @[chitalpas](https://twitter.com/chitalpas)..!
> 
> thank u so much for reading! stay safe and pls, pls take care of urself and those around u <3


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